Stranded (11 page)

I am sure I am not the only one to have started cataloguing reasons for Samad’s non-appearance, in my mind.

Reason one: the engine on his boat was definitely sounding dodgy. I noticed that this morning. He could be drifting out at sea, unable to reach the mainland (this is by far the most likely scenario, in my opinion).

Solution: he had a phone with him. And even if he has no coverage, he will attract the attention of a passing boat sooner or later.

Result: he will come back, or get someone else to come and pick us up.

Reason two: he got back to the mainland, went to collect his lighters and suffered some kind of freak accident. He might, for instance, not have wanted to draw attention to himself at the resort, and thus he could have got on the moped I have seen him riding, and whizzed along the jungle path to his home in the village. He could have come off his moped and banged his head.

Solution: as long as he isn’t dead, and does not have amnesia, he will come back for us.

Result: we might end up being here overnight, unless he is dead, in which case it might take a bit longer. Even then, his family will know about us and they will make sure we are collected. People only get amnesia in films, so we should be all right on that front.

Reason three: there was an emergency with one of his children, and he forgot about us.

Solution: he will deal with the emergency, and send someone to fetch us.

I stop the speculation, and tell myself sternly that people in real life are not at all likely to die out of the blue.

‘He’ll come for us,’ I say, with all the desperate confidence I can muster.

‘Of course he will,’ Edward agrees. ‘Now. What are we going to do for food, while we wait? We’ve got all these lovely fishies. Anyone know how to make a fire by rubbing sticks?’

‘Of course we don’t,’ says Mark, and this is the first time anyone has sounded angry. Until now, we have been ruthlessly polite to one another. ‘Isn’t that the entire fucking point?’

‘Er. Gene and I have done it, in the past,’ says Jean, sounding more hesitant than usual. ‘But I’m not sure I could manage it. I’ll have a go. The sun’s still hot enough, atleast.’ She half-smiles. ‘I don’t suppose anyone has a magnifying glass?’

Mark snorts, and there is a general, sorry shaking of heads.

‘If we had a fucking magnifying glass . . .’ Mark mutters.

‘No,’ she continues, ‘I thought not. No mirrors? In that case, may I use one of these cans of drink?’

The air is thick with scepticism as Gene hoists himself up from the sand and grabs one of the cans of Coke that Samad has left in a box on the beach. Together, without a word to each other or to the rest of us, they get to work, polishing the bottom of the drink can, using a small piece of chocolate from the side of the cool box, followed by the edge of Jean’s sarong.

I sigh and lean back. The chances of this working are, surely, zero. I watch thin, blonde Cherry leading Mark away by the hand to keep him from heckling.

When she is satisfied with the (admittedly impressive) sheen on the bottom of the can, Jean hands it to me, telling me to ‘Hold that and don’t touch the shiny part,’ and the two of them set off to the edge of the jungle. I sit, clutching the can, and wait. My eyes are still scanning the horizon, constantly. I think there is an exponentially high chance of Samad returning before they get back with whatever they have gone for, and this thought buoys me in an illogical way.

‘He
will
come,’ Katy almost whispers, as she sits beside me. I look at her, and see that her eyes, too, are fixed on the horizon.

‘I know,’ I say. We stare, side by side, both of us willing his boat to edge around the corner.

But it is Jean and Gene who come back, twenty minutes later, their arms full of dry leaves from the jungle.

‘Not easy to find these,’ says Gene, dropping them with a sigh. ‘Lucky it hasn’t rained today.’

Jean sits next to me, and takes back the can.

‘You know what to do,’ she says to her husband. I do not even really want to watch, as I am embarrassed for them, but it turns out that I cannot look away. She holds a dead frond of palm tree in front of the can, and angles it until the sunlight, which is coming strongly from disturbingly low in the sky, bounces off, and on to the leaf.

Edward and Katy move closer, too.

After a long, long time, the leaf starts to smoke. I lean in, kneeling up beside them, amazed as the smouldering leaf begins to glow. Then, suddenly, it is alight: the flame is tiny, but it is there. Jean shields it with her hand, cupping it and moving slowly to the pile of dry leaves.

Now it is as good as a match.

We all stare as she lights leaf after leaf, until enough of them catch fire properly. Gene has built a cage of sticks all around them. The sticks start to crackle. There is a fire. They have actually built a fire on the beach.

Gene grins up at us. We all gaze, mesmerised, forgetting everything else for a moment. There was nothing, and then there was fire. It feels as magical to me as it must have done to the cavemen.

‘Don’t just stand there!’ he roars. ‘Get to it! Dry sticks, twigs, branches, whatever you can find. And fast! Dry, remember! Dry!’

By the time we have a proper, roaring bonfire, the sun has vanished behind the bulk of the island, and the light it has left behind is fading fast. The flames are leaping up, and we are all making forays into the jungle, which is now alive with hissing, chirruping, otherworldly noises, and coming back with arms full of wood. Much of it is wet, but we bring it anyway.

I hate being in the jungle. It terrifies me far beyond reason. Yet I force myself to do it, sticking as close to Katy as I possibly can. I try not to let anyone see the depths of my dread and horror.

When Samad comes back, he will see the fire; it will allow him to navigate to us, in the darkness. That is why we are doing it.

‘He’s not coming.’

I wince at those words, and pretend Mark has not spoken.

‘He probably won’t be coming tonight,’ Katy agrees, hesitantly.

‘No shit,’ Mark agrees, and he sits down, beside Katy, next to the fire. We are cooking the fish on it, and it smells incredible. I am starving. If I could be sure of being rescued in about an hour, I would be enjoying myself enormously.

‘And you have to ask yourself, Katy,’ Mark continues, ‘why is he not coming tonight? Why in the world would he shoot off to fetch a lighter and never come back? I’ve been running over and over it in my head, and I do not believe there is a benign solution to this conundrum.’

As a mother, I automatically want to dispense comfort. Thus I cannot help myself stepping quickly in.

‘I don’t know what scenarios you’re working on, Mark, but I think he’s very likely to be back for us soon. Say he had an accident and is in hospital or something. He has a family. He was telling me about them. He has a wife and three daughters, and his brother and his family live with them too. He wants to set up as a tour operator because he wants to make more money for them all, and tourism is the only way to do that here. So he would not have set off with us, on his inaugural tour, without telling them what he was up to. Which means that, even if we have to camp out here overnight, someone will know we’re here. Samad’s wife and his brother. They’ll come and fetch us, or send someone else to do it. Maybe his baby’s ill and he’s got caught up with that? He’ll remember us. There’s no possible scenario in which that doesn’t happen.’

There is a little sigh.

‘Thanks, Esther,’ says Katy.

‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ Edward sounds grateful.

‘Absolutely,’ agrees Cherry. ‘We’ll have a little adventure, and enjoy being rescued in the morning. In fact this will be a night we’ll never forget.’

‘Uh-huh,’ says Mark. ‘Well, Esther, I do hope you’re right. In every scenario, we are camping out on the beach tonight, yes? So we may as well get on with it. Try to make it into a great spiritual awakening, or something.’ His voice is mocking.

Soon it is pitch black. The jungle is phenomenally noisy. An enormous lizard slinks out on to the beach, looks at us with a beady eye and turns away. Something yells ‘Gecko!’ so loudly that I jump: although I have seen and heard these geckos – lizards that are smaller than their voices sound – back at the resort, there they were an entertaining novelty, and now we are on their patch. They sound nearly human, and very creepy.

‘The key thing,’ says Jean, ‘is not to let it spook you. This is not so very different from where we woke up this morning. All that’s missing is the structure of the hut around you. We can all lie down here and sleep on the sand. It’s good for the soul, and as Esther says, it’s only until tomorrow. If you have a sarong, I’d put it over yourself, not under, to keep the mossies away. Don’t get spooked. We’re going to be all right.’

The sky is alive with stars. There are so many that I find it impossible, as I lie awake on my back, not to be happy. I am part of the cosmos, camping out on a beach, sleeping under the heaven’s embroidered cloth for the first time in my life. I can picture Daisy at home, perhaps watching the same stars and thinking of me (in fact it is still daytime at home, and she would never look at the stars and think of me, but I am trying to create a cosmic connection and so must ignore inconvenient realities). She will be thinking of me, because it’s my birthday. She will have texted or called, and she will be wondering why I have not replied. I try to send her a telepathic explanation.

There is no point staying awake in the dark, now that we have eaten all the food.

We lie around the fire in the warm night air. Mark and Cherry huddle up together, a little distance from us, under two huge beach towels. Jean and Gene pick spaces resolutely apart from one another. Katy, Edward and I lie in a line, our heads towards the fire, and Katy wriggles close to me so that her towel covers us both. It is more reassuring than my flimsy sarong.

I whisper my thanks, unsure of who is already asleep.

‘When I wanted to do something different today,’ I add, up close to her, ‘this is not quite what I had in mind.’

She giggles. ‘It’s quite something, though, isn’t it?’ she whispers. ‘Amazing things happen when plans go wrong. And you realise you can’t control it all after all, and you just have to live in the moment and do what you can.’

‘Yes,’ I agree, ‘though I’ll be pretty happy to see that boat in the morning.’

‘Oh yes,’ Katy agrees. ‘Bet you won’t forget this birthday.’

‘Happy birthday Esther,’ says Edward, drowsily, and everyone joins in. I drift off to sleep with their words echoing around my fuzzy brain.

Cathy

June 1988

Four days to go

They are all laughing at us: I leave school every day wanting to cry. I manage not to, however, because I know that my feelings are nothing. My tears, if I let them come, would be for the poor arrogant sinners who are about to realise the truth. They think we are ridiculous, and they point and stare and giggle at us all the time. They think I am upset about that. I am not.

They could be taken to heaven to sit with Jesus for eternity – they
really could
– but they are blind to the truth. They do not care. They are condemning themselves to eternal misery, just because it’s easier to chuckle at the weirdos than it is to listen to what we say.

Now I know why Cassandra has the name she does. Although she was secular, Cassandra was condemned to tell the truth and never to be believed. I am Cassandra myself, now. We are all Cassandra.

I have realised the harsh truth of God’s word. Life is not easy and most people are not good. The lazy path that you could unthinkingly walk is the one that takes you directly to damnation.

God does not make it as simple as people think He does. He will not take just anybody. He gives us our time on Earth to prove ourselves, and He does not hesitate to damn those who are found wanting. However, if I can save one soul (and after today I believe that I can), then I will have riches beyond anything any human can imagine.

I did my last exam today. I did my best because I wanted Him to see that I was good.

I have found one person who is interested in seeing the truth. Many others have pretended. Yesterday, one of the year four girls told Martha she was interested in finding out more. Martha brought her straight to me and we explained it. She asked lots of questions. We answered them all, falling over ourselves in our excitement, knowing that all of this would be worth it a million times over if we could save just one soul.

Then she started to giggle. After that, her friends, who had been listening from the other side of a door, all burst out laughing. The whole thing was a massive joke.

They thought it was at our expense. I started muttering prayers then and there, trying to intercede with God on their behalf. They have no idea what they are doing, I know. Since we found out that this was going to happen, I have felt myself possessed by the divine. I live on a different plane, now. I think that this is how other people feel when they are ‘in love’, but this love is a million times more intense.

Eva and Daniella have been having better luck with the younger ones. They have been banned from talking about it at all, because some of their teachers complained that the children were getting scared and excited and telling everyone the world was about to end. There was a lot of energy around at the lower end of the school, and when all mention of it it was forbidden by the teachers, that made it a thousand times more interesting to the other children. None of us have ever been subversive before. We have always been straighter than straight, squarer than square. Now we are a bit naughty.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ Mr Stephenson said today, and we boggled at his profanity. ‘I do not want to hear one single word about the . . .’ here he clearly censored himself, ‘apocalypse!’

The teachers even spoke to Cassandra and the others about it.

‘Mass hysteria,’ they said. ‘Highly damaging.’ The adult Villagers were pleased with us.

Eva and Daniella have at least five new friends who will be joining us on Tuesday. I only have one person – but one is enough. She is Sarah. Sarah has white-blonde hair with black roots, and her ears are pierced three times in each one. I have always liked her, because she is kind and thoughtful, though I have never had very much to do with her because we live at opposite ends of the spectrum. Sarah often doesn’t bother with her homework, she works when she feels like it and she is rude to teachers most days. I do everything I am supposed to do, put my hand up only when I am certain I know the right answer, and I never, ever misbehave. I would be in so much trouble at the Village if I acted like Sarah does. Before we knew about the Rapture, I used to envy her slightly.